Novel & Cerita Dying Embers

However, it wasn’t the same as to what I'm seeing now. There was a boy. I can’t recognize his face because of the weird blurry effect of the dream. The only thing I saw clearly were his eyes. His emerald-colored eyes are still engraved in my mind. Even though it’s already been a year since I last dreamt of it, I still can’t forget his eyes. The scenes may be different to what I'm seeing now, but they were both peculiar and still not on earth.

I opened the video file I had recorded an hour ago. My face stared back at me pale, determined, and trembling. “My name is Sheila Drake,” I began in the recording, my voice steady despite the tightness in my throat. “I was declared dead a year ago in a fire set by my husband, Adrian Drake. What I’m about to share will expose the truth behind his empire, his company, and the blood he’s built it on.”

"I burn where hope is gone." My spirit trembled. "Why me?" "Because you are not finished. Because you still burn. And because the gods fear what you can become." "I’m dead," I whispered. "Only dying," the voice said. "And death is not the end for those like you." I looked back. The pit of fire still blazed. But in the distance, I saw something else. A spark. A single ember, floating. Untouched. Undying. "That’s… me?"

From the number of houses that had scorch marks licking up the sides, it was clear Ember had been here. So many of them were crumbling, halfway torn down with families hiding inside, clinging to the shadows as the last hints of sunlight faded. It grew worse as we neared the center, so much worse. Bodies were lined in neat rows, covered in white sheets stained grey with ash. There weren’t many, perhaps only a dozen, but it didn’t matter. Those twelve carried the same weight as a hundred—as a thousand, would. The sidewalks and street were streaked with black marks, kissed by Ember’s flame as she pillaged the town. Cars were turned over, some halfway crumpled and smoking. The stench of burnt mo

Through my treatments and hospital stays and the times I pushed you away because I was scared of exactly this moment, of leaving you behind. The hardest part of dying isn't the dying itself. It's the leaving. Leaving May, who sacrificed everything for me. Leaving Midnight, who somehow always knew when my lungs were bad and would purr against my chest like he was helping me breathe. And leaving you, my beautiful, brilliant, stubborn Shade, who never saw yourself the way I saw you. So let me tell you what I see: I see a boy who taught himself engineering from library books because his father never bothered to show him how things work.

There was messages from people I hadn’t spoken to in weeks, and a few I hadn’t expected to ever hear from again. Each alert brought another headline. Each more brutal than the last: BREAKING: EMERY – THE DESTRUCTION OF TWO BROTHERS, KILLIAN AND TOBIAS. EMERY: THE SEDUCTRESS CAUGHT BETWEEN RIVALS. IS EMERY A GOLD DIGGER? SOCIALITE CAUGHT IN LOVE TRIANGLE. THE WOMAN BEHIND THE BROKEN BROTHERHOOD – EMERY’S ROLE IN KILLIAN & TOBIAS’S FALLING OUT.

Frost began to gather on the edges of my sleeves, and the world turned quieter with every mile. By the second night, most of the soldiers were too tired to speak. Fires burned low, and I sat near one with Seraphine, warming my hands while she stirred a pot of herbs. Her eyes, ancient and tired, watched the flames like she could see stories inside them. “The Ember Plains,” she muttered. “You truly think that place will save us?” “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it’s the only place left that hasn’t already burned.” She shook her head. “That’s because even fire fears what sleeps there.”

I snapped, pushing past her to open the window wider. “Asphyxia. That's the medical term that covers the entire…concept of suffocation. Just so you know, you know. But it's not like I was trying to kill you, or me. We're too young, and I'm incapable of murder, you know that. I've only ever killed geckos since I was born…” She rambled, trailing off when she saw my death stare. I admit, I was more pissed at the fact that her charred whatever woke me up from my dream. I wished I heard everything my father had to say, but unfortunately, I got woken up abruptly.

Right when I scanned my boarding pass and stepped through the gate, he called out, "Lucille, is there really no chance for us?" I did not stop walking. That was the clearest answer I could give him. The flight from Ember City to Cascade City flew by, just three hours. I had never been to Cascade City before. It was chillier than I expected. I checked into the cozy B&B I had booked instead of some fancy hotel. I wanted to feel the pulse of the place.

Leo asked. I thought about the fire that had broken through my binding, the ancient fury that had opened its eyes inside me and refused to be extinguished. I thought about Marcus, out there somewhere, still burning with whatever twisted rage drove him, and about how different that kind of fire was from what I wanted to build here. "Ember House," I said slowly, testing the words. "Because an ember isn't the destructive part of a fire. It's what's left after everything burns down — small, but still warm. Still alive. Still capable of starting something new if you're patient with it."